Android L should offer major battery life improvements

Android L could offer major battery life improvements for your Android smartphones and tablets according to early beta testing.

One of the major features announced with Android L at Google I/O was Project Volta, new software tweaks that will help improve the battery life for your devices.

Some of these Project Volta features includes a new API that better schedules smaller phone tasks and what Google calls a “battery historian” that tracks the apps and activities that drain your battery the fastest.

Now, Ars Technica has put the Android L developer tester through its paces, with the help of members of the XDA developer forums, to see how much Project Volta will really help extend your battery life.

And the results are pretty impressive - albeit only in these tightly controlled conditions for the moment.

Through the website’s tests, Android L managed to offer 36 per cent more battery life than Android 4.4 KitKat, meaning an extra two hours runtime on the test device. Apparently that wasn’t a brand new device with a fresh battery either, so Android L could offer even better results on devices running it straight out of the box.

This was achieved without using battery saver mode too.

However, some XDA developers saw Android L suck up more battery life than its predecessor OS, but this was most likely affected by the apps. According to one developer, WhatsApp was sucking up 15 per cent of his phone’s battery, but this is probably a beta bug that will be fixed by the time Android L is released in the autumn.

Of course, this is early days for Android L so there is bound to be a lot of changes before the new operating system is available. Google is most likely tweaking its bundled apps too, helping improve the overall OS power efficiency.

Fingers crossed this is a strong indicator of things to come with Android L later this year. Now we just need to know what it’s called.Read more: Android L features – What’s new